India calls on UN ‘to isolate Pakistan’
TIME TO IDENTIFY NATIONS THAT NURTURE, PEDDLE AND EXPORT TERROR — MINISTER
India began a campaign to isolate Pakistan at the United Nations yesterday, telling the 193-member General Assembly it was time to identify nations that nurture, peddle and export terrorism and isolate them if they don’t join the global fight.
India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said the arrest of Pakistani Bahadur Ali was “living proof of Pakistan’s complicity in cross-border terror.” India has said Ali confessed that he was trained by the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terror group.
“But when confronted with such evidence, Pakistan remains in denial. It persists in the belief that such attacks will enable it to obtain the territory it covets,” she said.
“My firm advice to Pakistan is: Abandon this dream. Let me state unequivocally that Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India and will always remain so,” Swaraj said.
“We need to forget our prejudices and join hands together to script an effective strategy against terror,” Swaraj said. “And if any nation refuses to join this global strategy, then we must isolate it.”
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif last week told the General Assembly India had put unacceptable conditions on dialogue.
“What pre-conditions?” Swaraj said yesterday. “We took the initiative to resolve issues not on the basis of conditions, but on the basis of friendship.” Pakistan’s UN Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi dismissed Swaraj’s statement as “a litany of falsehoods and baseless allegations.”
Pakistan Foreign Office spokesman Nafees Zakaria said that Swaraj disowned the Security Council resolution by calling Kashmir an integral part of India in her speech at the UN General Assembly. “Can Indian EAM explain that if Kashmir is an ‘integral part of India, why is it on the Agenda of Security Council’,” he said on Twitter.
‘Blood and water cannot flow together,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said yesterday as he chaired a review meeting of 56-yearold Indus Water Treaty during which it was decided that India will “exploit to the maximum” the water of Pakistan-controlled rivers, including Jhelum, as per the water sharing pact.
Held amid heightened tension between India and Pakistan, the meeting also decided to set up interministerial task forces to go into the details and working of the Treaty with a “sense of urgency”, senior government sources said.
Attended by National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar, the Water Resources Secretary, and senior PMO officials, the meeting also noted that the meeting of Indus Water Commission can “only take place in atmosphere free of terror”. The Commission has held 112 meetings so far.
“Prime Minister’s Modi’s message at the meeting was that ‘rakt aur paani ek saath nahin beh sakta’ (blood and water cannot flow together),” sources said.
Apart from deciding to exploit, to maximum capacity, three of the rivers that are under Pakistan’s control — Indus, Chenab and Jhelum — in the areas of hydro power, irrigation and storage, the meeting also agreed to review the “unilateral suspension” of Tulbul navigation project in 1987.
Weighing options
The sources said the decision to maximise the water resources for irrigation will address the “pre-existing” sentiment of people of Jammu and Kashmir, who have complained in the past about the treaty not being fair to them.
The meeting came as India weighed its options to hit back at Pakistan in the aftermath of the Uri attack that left 18 soldiers dead, triggering demands that the government scrap the water distribution pact to mount pressure on that country.